Charter Awards 2025

  • Historic arcade houses young professionals
    <strong>Microlofts at The Arcade Providence</strong>&nbsp;<em>Providence, Rhode Island</em>

    Build Great Places / #thisiscnu

  • Expanding options for a car-oriented suburban area
    <strong>Village of Providence</strong> <em>Huntsville, AL</em>

    Build Great Places / #thisiscnu

  • Mercado District | Tucson, Arizona
    A timeless place from the ground up. #thisiscnu

    Build Great Places / #thisiscnu

  • Crosstown_Concourse_2018_Charter_LooneyRicksKiss
    Crosstown_Concourse_2018_Charter_LooneyRicksKiss
    From former warehouse to "vertical village"
    <strong>Crosstown Concourse</strong>&nbsp; <em>Memphis, Tennessee</em>

    Build Great Places / #thisiscnu

  • A unique building becomes a hub for historic neighborhoods
    <strong>Ponce City Market</strong> <em>Atlanta, GA</em>

    Build Great Places / #thisiscnu

  • Jazz Market New Orleans Audience Seating
    Jazz Market New Orleans Audience Seating
    Trumpeting a cultural revival
    <strong>Peoples Health New Orleans Jazz Market</strong>&nbsp; <em>New Orleans, Louisiana</em>

    Build Great Places / #thisiscnu

  • From parking lot to urban tour-de-force
    <strong>UCLA Weyburn</strong>&nbsp;<em>Los Angeles, California</em>

    Build Great Places / #thisiscnu

  • Southside
    Ten acres that transformed a city #thisiscnu

    Build Great Places / #thisiscnu

  • A mixed-use center for town and gown
    <strong>Storrs Center</strong> <em>Mansfield, CT</em>

    Build Great Places / #thisiscnu

For the 25th year, CNU's Charter Awards will recognize outstanding achievements in architectural, landscape, and urban design and planning worldwide. Regarded as the preeminent award for excellence in urban design, the CNU Charter Awards honor a select number of winners—including student winners. Winning projects represent major contributions to building more equitable, sustainable, connected, healthy, and prosperous communities. 

CNU convenes a Charter Awards jury of distinguished designers, architects, planners, and scholars who review entries and select winners. Applicants are judged on the extent to which they fulfill and advance the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism, which defines the essential qualities of outstanding buildings and urban places. Charter Awards recognize projects at three scales:

  • The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town
  • Neighborhood, District, and Corridor
  • Block, Street, and Building

Special Category: Emerging Projects. To highlight design and urbanist innovations in the planning and design process, an applicant can designate the project as an “Emerging Project.” These are theoretical or research projects that may not be immediately realizable but hold exceptional promise for showing how to apply the techniques and principles of the New Urbanism to the evolving realities of climate change, housing affordability, transportation needs, a public realm complicated by new technologies, and suburban sprawl. They may be at any geographic scale (Region, Metropolis, City, Town; Neighborhood, District, Corridor; or Block, Street, Building).

The winners will be celebrated at CNU 33 in Providence, RI on June 11 - June 14, 2025. If you have any questions, please contact Lauren Mayer at lmayer@cnu.org

Applications will open in mid-October 2024. 

Still need to get familiar with the guidelines? See "Guidelines" below.